2. Find broken links

But this is an unconventional approach to backlink building that works, primarily because you’re doing the website owner a massive favor by pointing out damaging broken links on their pages.

There’ll be websites related to your niche who can provide you with awesome contextual backlinks but who have, unfortunately, already linked out to your rivals and aren’t preparing any fresh, relevant content just yet. Darn it.

However, these same websites may also have a few broken links that really need replacing.

Due to a lack of time or apathy, the website owners probably aren’t even aware that the links are broken. Instead, they need you to point this out to them.

Of the 437 positive responses received from Moz’s outreach campaign, 262 were received by a woman while 174 were received by a man.

We probably all have our own theories as to why this is—are women just more trustworthy than men?—but the upshot is that, if you’re not a woman already, you might want to consider pretending to be one when reaching out to blogs.

Hey, in the wacky world of the internet, there’s not exactly much shame in that! Ghostwriters pretend to be different people all the time.

4. Create a community and arrange a meetup

A Facebook group is fantastic because it brings together your customers and followers into one place and turns them into a tribe. And once they’re part of a tribe, the idea is that they’ll pretty much do anything you want.

Likewise, you could create a community on your site for your followers/fans/customers. Setting up a forum is pretty easy, and then all you need to do is encourage people to chat, post, start topics and share cool stuff.

Then, you can arrange a meetup!

Facebook is a great way not only to expand your visibility but also to collaborate and get more backlinks

The great thing about this is that some people who join the meetup will also have their own website, and like you, they’ll want to document the meetup and blog about it.

And this means—you guessed it—they’ll link out to you. Huzzah!

The great thing about this particular unconventional approach to link building is that, although it’ll take some time, it shares a purpose other than building links.

Instead, you’re actually offering real value to people in building a community and bringing people together. Sure, you want those links too, but it’s such a creative idea that there’s more to it than just more links.

5. Feature other bloggers or companies in a post

If you have a blog, why would you want to write a post all about other bloggers? Um, because backlinks, of course!

Promote other companies in your blog post, and they’ll be happy to backlink to you. Credits: blog.nightwatch.io